The measure of effectiveness of a CEO and its executive board has always been the degree to which the business is achieving its purpose. Whether in Canada, the U.S., Europe or Asia, an executive board’s purpose should be to increase shareholder value, a purpose that is best accomplished by serving the needs of various stakeholders. Somewhere in the pyramid of stakeholders is the consumer or client, whose likes, favorites, and preferences must be met with quality personalized products and services that deliver high competitive value. In an interconnected global knowledge economy, this has meant listening to what consumers are saying online through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and engaging in two-way conversations to respond in real-time to consumer demands.
The recent decision The Queen v. Cole by the Supreme Court of Canada touches upon interesting issues regarding information privacy in the digital age.
The facts are simple. An information technologist working at the same high school as Mr. Cole, a teacher, remotely accessed Cole’s history of internet access and one of his drives and found a hidden file which contained nude photographs of a student. The photographs and internet file were copied onto a disc and given to the police, which determined that a search warrant was unnecessary. Cole was subsequently charged with possession of child pornography and fraudulently obtaining data from another computer hard drive. The trial judge excluded the computer material under Sections 8 and 24(2) of the Charter. In overturning the decision, the summary conviction appeal court found no breach of Section 8. This decision was set aside by the Ontario Court of Appeal, which concluded that the evidence of the disc containing the temporary internet files and the laptop computer and its mirror image was excluded. A 6-1 majority ruling by the Supreme Court concluded that the police infringed upon Cole’s rights but upheld the Court of Appeals’ finding that the evidence should not have been excluded from trial.
The following article, written by my colleague Nicole Moody, first appeared in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. Thanks to Nicole for allowing us to republish it here.
Rick Bortnick
Many of us have been there. Sipping our morning coffee, signing into our Facebook accounts, waiting to see what notifications will greet us. We are intrigued to see that we have a friend request. Who could it be? An acquaintance from the past? A new colleague who we met at work? Whoever it is, we know that by accepting the request we will be granted access into this individual’s life and will know more about them in five minutes than we would know in a lifetime of small talk.
Due to the use of usernames and passwords, there is a belief that information shared on Facebook is confidential unless publicly shared. However, courts around the country are now addressing just how private this information really is.
In cases nationwide, litigants are asking courts to grant unfettered access to other parties’ Facebook or other social media accounts. Inevitably, in the age of status updates and hashtags, poking and friending, the lines between public and private information have become blurred. This trend has become increasingly prevalent in the insurance industry as insurance companies have realized the usefulness of social media in litigation.
We have all heard a story about some unfortunate personal injury lawyer who forgot to remind his client that ‘what happens in Vegas stays on YouTube’. Personal injury and family lawyers are becoming highly attuned to the crucial role that social media websites can play in civil litigation.
Yet when it comes to cases involving property damage, it appears that lawyers and other subrogation professionals have overlooked the potential utility of these sites in advancing their case. This post highlights some important ways in which YouTube can play a role in a subrogated claim for property damage.
1. A Search Engine for Video Evidence
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. As of March, 2010, twenty-four hours of video was being uploaded to YouTube every minute. To put this in perspective, consider that more video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all three major news networks have created in 60 years. [1] What does this mean? If you have a property damage claim, stop for a minute and think about whether it was an event that was likely to warrant a second glance. Were there flames? An explosion? Did a massive wall of water sweep over the property, obliterating all before it? In that case, it is likely that someone not only had taken that second glance, but pulled out his or her cell phone, recorded a video clip, and posted it on YouTube. Check it out. Simply enter the loss date, location and a one-word description into YouTube’s search engine and you may discover valuable evidence that can provide crucial insights into the loss.
There have been a recent flurry of blog posts and media stories warning internet users about the potential dangers of posting their whereabouts on social networking sites, as such personal information is being used by opportunists to facilitate crimes. For example, just in the last month, three men in Nashua, New Hampshire allegedly used information they obtained from users’ Facebook status updates to learn when the users would not be home and thereupon broke into their vacant and vulnerable residences. Although Facebook has denied any link between its site and the crimes, the Nashua police believe that detailed information about the posters’ travel plans provided the thieves with sufficient information to know when the homes would be unoccupied.
Of course, the incidence of such crimes has not been widely disseminated through traditional media sources, such as newspapers, radio and television. As such, most Americans are unaware of this increasing phenomena. At the same time, internet users are more widely and more frequently publishing their personal information, including their travel and vacation plans, on social networking and other public sites. Moreover, beyond the routine “tweets” and run-of-the-mill social networking status updates, new applications for cellular phones and PDAs are being created to facilitate geographical updates. These applications such as “Foursquare,” “Gowalla” and “Facebook Places,” enable users to instantly identify their current physical location on the profiles they have created on social networking sites. Needless to say, allowing geographical information to freely be disclosed to the public can provide opportunists with even more accurate information about the whereabouts of their victims and their distance from an unoccupied and vulnerable residence.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare—millions of Americans, including myself, depend on these cyber sites as their gateway to information and communication in the outside world. What we may not realize, or choose to ignore for convenience’s sake, is that this gateway lies on a two-way street. The information that we seek using websites such as Google and what we communicate on Facebook and Twitter provide companies with vital data to better market their products to us. This use of information is referred to as “data mining. ”
An example of data mining can be seen in the advertisements that pop up on the side of your Facebook home page. Such ads are often relevant to the information posted on your “Profile” page, such as advertisements promoting products from your college alma mater.
At the outset, data mining seems like a win-win situation for both the consumer and the seller—the consumer is marketed with a product in which they are seemingly interested and the company has utilized its advertising budget in an informed, cost-effective manner. At the same time, however, the threat of an invasion of privacy is real and has the attention of members of Congress and federal officials to create legislation regulating the way in which, and the extent to which, our personal information is shared with third parties.
His name is Ghyslain Raza, but you may know of him as “Star Wars Kid”, a portly 15-year-old student at a Quebec private high school who had filmed himself wielding a mock light saber, pretending to be a Star Wars character in combat. The two-minute video was supposed to be private, but he left it lying around at his school where three students, who did not know the teenager, came across the video, posted it on the Internet on April 14, 2003, adding a message inviting people to make insulting remarks about the clip.
Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t just his friends who found the footage so amusing. The video went ‘viral’. One Web log that posted the video was allegedly downloaded 1.1 million times, and by October 2004 one Internet site dedicated to the video had recorded 76 million visits. According to UK marketing firm The Viral Factory, it became the most downloaded video of 2006. So mortified was the teenager that he dropped out of school and finished the semester at a psychiatric ward. According to the student, “It was simply unbearable, totally. It was impossible to attend class.” More than 35 other revised versions of the video clip, created by other people, have found their way to the Internet, with additional sound and visual effects.
This is an extreme but far from unique example of the devastation wrought by cyber-bullying, the term given to internet conduct in which students harass other students by e-mail and on the internet. Given the potentially devastating consequences of cyberbullying, should schools have the power to discipline their students engaging in this form of harmful conduct?
A major issue confronting school boardsis that cyberbullying usually does not take place at school, although its effects can later reverberate among students during school hours. Students may post offensive material from home, or other times outside of school hours, but the targets are fellow classmates. Is it appropriate for a school board to discipline a student for posting such material simply because the postings are being accessed by other students at school or target other students? At the same time, with power comes responsibility – if school boards have the power to discipline students for their behavior outside of school, are schools then to be mandated with the responsibility to essentially monitor and censor the world-wide web? Just how far should a school board’s jurisdiction extend regarding inappropriate off-school student e-conduct?
Posted February 22nd, 2010 by Narine BagdassariancloseAuthor: Narine BagdassarianName: Narine Bagdassarian Email: nbagdass@yahoo.com Site:http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/narine-bagdassarian/19/855/ba3 About: Narine Bagdassarian is a lawyer with Jones Harley LLP in Toronto, Ontario. Her experience focuses on insurance defense work - personal injury, property loss, products liability and subrogation. Before moving to Toronto, she was a practicing attorney in Los Angeles, specializing in Workers’ Compensation Insurance Defense. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from UCLA in 2002 and, in 2005, she obtained her law degree from Whittier Law School.
Narine is a huge UCLA Bruins football fan, as well as being a devoted Los Angeles Kings fan. (Pre-game superstitions and protocol? Check.) She looks forward to the day when she can own the Kings. In the meantime, she's attempting to resist the urge to speak like a Canadian (failing miserably at this, she's been told).See Authors Posts (5)
Who would have thought a comment as innocent as “Just walked into work at Cozen O’Connor-Toronto…so much work to get done” could potentially cause you so much trouble?
I came across an article this weekend by Tracy Staedter, titled “I’m Not Home: Please Rob Me”. Ready to become paranoid? Read the article – it’s short and to the point. Ever send out Evites? How about prior tweets, MySpace posts, etc. inviting people to your place and including an address? Bingo! Better pack up and move quick!
The website causing havoc is www.PleaseRobMe.com. Check it out…make sure you aren’t on the site…then check again after every time you tweet, post, etc. Do you have the time to constantly check? Probably not. Should you? Probably. It may make you paranoid, but then again, shouldn’t you be? But should the creators of the website be blamed – legally, morally, ethically? Should they be held accountable for what you put out into the public realm? Can you sue for violation of your privacy rights? Do you really have an expectation of privacy in any of those posts? In an age where MySpace, Friendster and other social networking sites regularly have their records subpoenaed, why should anyone think that anything they post will be “private”? What piqued my curiosity even more was how this website could apply in the criminal or tort law application. Can this website be used to substantiate or corroborate an accused’s alibi – “Your Honor, look! I have proof that I wasn’t in the city when the crime occurred…I tweeted that I would be in Los Angeles!” Look, my knowledge of Canadian (or U.S., for that matter) Criminal Law/Procedure does not extend further than the 800 or so pages of textbooks I read while in law school. But surely this website can be put to more use than just what the creators intended. So long as a proper foundation is laid, and the purported evidence is relevant, it may be admitted, right? Something to definitely consider as a defense attorney.
The creators of the website claim the site is supposed to help us…to open our eyes to the evil out in the world. Call me crazy, but perhaps a simple email addressed to me would have been more appreciated…though it leaves one wondering if such a logical course of action would have been as effective.
A building materials company and its owner have appealed a $12.6 million verdict against them, alleging that a juror posted messages on Twitter.com during the trial that show he’s biased against them.
The motion seeking a new trial was filed Thursday on behalf of Russell Wright and his company, Stoam Holdings. It claims juror Johnathan Powell sent eight messages — or “tweets” — to the micro-blogging Web site via his cellular phone. According to the motion, one posting listed the company’s Web address and read in part: “oh and nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they’ll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter.” Another described what “Juror Jonathan” did today: “I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money.” You can view Johnathan’s twiittering at this LINK.
In his motion, filed in Washington County Circuit Court in Fayetteville, lawyer Drew Ledbetter wrote that the messages show Powell “was predisposed toward giving a verdict that would impress his audience.” Powell, of Fayetteville, told The Associated Press on Friday that Wright and his lawyers are “just grasping at straws at this point.”
“I didn’t really do anything wrong, so it’s kind of crazy that they’re trying to use this to get the case thrown out,” Powell said. “I understand where they’re coming from, they lost over $12 million.”
The jury awarded the money Feb. 26 to Mark Deihl and William Nystrom, two northwest Arkansas men who invested in Wright’s company. The company sold a building material called Stoam that it claims combines the insulation qualities of foam with the strength of steel. Deihl’s attorney, Greg Brown, called the venture “nothing more than a Ponzi scheme.”
Brown said he doubts a new trial will be granted. He said Arkansas law requires defendants to prove that outside information entered the jury room and corrupted a verdict — not that information from the jury room made its way out.
Powell, a 29-year-old manager at a Wal-Mart photo lab, said he tried to talk to the judge Friday about what happened, but was turned away. He seemed a little shocked at what kind of power the 140-character messages on Twitter can carry. “I’m kind of surprised so many people have contacted me,” he said.
The measure of effectiveness of a CEO and its executive board has always been the degree to which the business is achieving its purpose. Whether in Canada, the U.S., Europe or Asia, an executive board’s purpose should be to increase shareholder value, a purpose that is best accomplished by serving the needs of various stakeholders. Somewhere in the pyramid of stakeholders is the consumer or client, whose likes, favorites, and preferences must be met with quality personalized products and services that deliver high competitive value. In an interconnected global knowledge economy, this has meant listening to what consumers are saying online through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and engaging in two-way conversations to respond in real-time to consumer demands.
The recent decision The Queen v. Cole by the Supreme Court of Canada touches upon interesting issues regarding information privacy in the digital age.
